A wonderful life

 Four years ago today, we lost someone dear to us.

He wasn't a rock star. He wasn't a rocket scientist. He wasn't anyone famous.
He was kind of grumpy sometimes. He hated change. He like preciseness. If you said "We left the house at 6:30", he would pipe up and say "It was 6:27!" 

He liked The Three Stooges, old-time comedy radio and TV shows. He liked the computer and visiting websites. He liked model trains and Car Talk. He liked building airplane models and collecting stuff. He hated parting with anything, even long past its usefulness. Not really a hoarder but a "thrifty saver". You never know when you might need that check number 231 from 1962.

When he was a little guy, he got polio. They think it was from playing in the water that cooled off the kids in inner city Chicago. He had a baby brother just about that time, but mom had to leave her infant, as soon as he was born, to tend to him in the hospital. Family often moved into the hopsital in those days to help the shorthanded nurses. Dad took care of the newborn. Unheard of in those days, but I'm sure a bond was forged early on between them.

As the two boys grew, it was obvious that the elder couldn't do as much as the older kids: his brace got in the way...yet, the kids all helped him and worked around his disability to make sure he could play baseball still. The younger boy made sure to include him always...God help you if you made fun of his older brother.

Dad died young, so the two boys helped mom out always. The elder never left home nor married; he was always there to help his mom on the day to day stuff. The younger went off to college, and later married, yet, he made sure things were done that needed doing if the elder son wasn't able to.

The younger son, now with a young family, moved his mom and brother from another state to live near him. The elder brother, in spite of his disabilities, never let anything stop him. He never complained about anything. He was a proud man. He accompanied his mom on trips so she could see the world. He doted on his niece and nephew, he loved to buy them gifts and do fun things with them.

Later on his brother remarried a woman with three little ones and he got a second job: picking up the youngest from school on some days. They became great buddies. She loved him so fiercely! They would play Hangman for hours, or other word games. Every end of summer, he and his mom had a ritual: take the kids school shopping, then maybe to a movie or a restaurant for lunch. It was a treasured memory for all. Later on, going through his stuff after he died, there were dozens of movie ticket stubs from their outings!

Another baby nephew joined the family and he was named after his dad. I think that made him pretty happy. It was fun watching him with another baby in the family. He took his "Uncle" job very seriously. Oh, we might get exasperated with him sometimes, he was grumpy, remember? But he was OUR grump. Getting him to actually SMILE was a coup in itself. I remember once driving him somewhere and he was being his usual grumpy self, and I said something that struck him funny. He let out a giggle and had a big smile on his face. For him that was a belly laugh.

When his mom died, he was kind of lost. It was painful to watch. I think a little piece of him died then too. Oh they bickered sometimes like an old married couple (causing the youngest child to think they were actually married, not mother and son !) but it was never serious. He missed her terribly, the one person he saw every day of his life, that made sure he was treated with dignity and unconditional love.

After she died, we made sure to include him in any celebration: it wouldn't have been the same without him there. As the grand nieces and grand nephews arrived, he had more fun buying baby toys. He was very meticulous as a gift giver, buying just the perfect thing. He had fallen at Christmas time in 2008 during a terrific snowstorm, so we were not able to celebrate Christmas together that year, and when he died in March, we found all those carefully wrapped gifts, with the nieces' and nephews' names on them. It was bittersweet: a final gift, but a painful memory of his last months with us.
He was my brother-in-law, and we miss him still. Yet, I feel that somewhere he's running in a baseball field on two perfect legs, having the time of his life. 

Miss you My.